And We’re Back . . . Hopefully SOPA and PIPA Aren’t

If you tried to visit 40Tech today, you saw that we went dark from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST. We turned out the lights, shutting off the site, to join the online protest again SOPA and PIPA. For a look at SOPA and PIPA, check out this video.

Fortunately, several legislators have withdrawn their support for these bills. We must remain vigilant, however, as the media giants have spent millions to lobby Congress, and surely aren’t finished with their attempts to protect their outdated business models.

4 Comments

Albert says:

I believe that SOPA/PIPA has good intentions; it enforces discipline to people as they post content. The main problem with the internet is the sense of anonymity, which results for people to use it to post unsavory content.

The main problem is, as what everyone says is the fact that the power to crack down on those content can be abused by the authorities.

I don’t know that I trust the media companies that SOPA and PIPA give power to. Just look at what happened with TWiT regularly – they reported on a copyright fight going on, were critical to a media company and used a sample clip as fair use during the reporting. That media company used the DMCA to censor the criticism and have the clip pulled from YouTube.

I think the media lobbyists will keep throwing money at this, and eventually chip away and get at least part of what they want. I think the whole Megaupload fiasco shows, though, that they don’t really need new laws.